Coordinated Attitude Tracking Control of Spacecraft Cluster Under Switching Topology

Aiming at the coordinated attitude tracking problem of spacecraft cluster under switching topology, this paper proposes a composite control scheme subject to multiple disturbances. The disturbances include periodic vibration generated by the flywheel and external environmental disturbances. The proposed control scheme can be divided into two steps. First, a nonlinear distributed observer is developed for each spacecraft to estimate the reference information of the leader over a jointly connected switching topology. Then, a tracking scheme based on sliding mode disturbance observer is proposed, which enables each disturbed spacecraft to track the estimated information. The proposed distributed control scheme can effectively estimate and compensate for disturbances, and ensure that each spacecraft's attitude tracks the leader's attitude. Simulation results show the proposed control scheme is effective.